Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Welcome to Politics and Purl!

What can I say, I'm here! Politics and Purl is the oddity that it appears to be, political rantings and knitting updates. If you're not sure how the two are related, don't worry, I'm not either. I am still going to talk about those two things.

Anyway, I am a serious West Wing junkie, almost to the point of absurdity. I love the old rapid-fire dialog, amusing one-liners, and poignant monologues. While it is not currently what it was when Sorkin and Schlamme were there, I am still loyal to it. Even bad West Wing is pretty good television. With this in mind, I am going to have a West Wing quote of the day.

In light of a conversation I had earlier about our seriously misdirected priorities, today's is:

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. - Sam Seaborn

And I really do think that sentiment could go for a lot of things that are very wrong. We value Britney Spears more than we value the 10% of adults in this country who cannot read well enough to read the newspaper(I'm not really sure that Ms. Spears isn't part of that 10%). We are some of the most poorly educated people in the free world, but it's okay because we have to give tax breaks to people with a lot of money. The average person couldn't point to Montana on a map without text, let alone Iraq. Most of us are monolingual(sadly, I'm not in the minority) in a world where countries other than the handful of English-speaking ones are beginning to dominate the global market. The world is pulling ahead of us. I suppose that's also okay because we have the military muscle.

I won't always rant like this, although I will rant often. I am involved in a couple of advocacy projects and organizations, and I will talk about this. I will talk about legislation on the floor, both state and federal. I will try not to be cynical. I believe that my presence here demonstrates that I am not.

Anyway, knitting projects. I just finished the hoodie from Stitch 'n Bitch. I'm so proud of my seams, I'm seriously proud of the pocket, the sleeves, all those things that are hard. There's only one problem. I could fit both you and me into it. I guess that's not so bad for the coming months. I did a gauge swatch and it was a little off but the person at the shop reassured me that it would be ok. My gauge was probably a little off as I went... or it got stretched out during blocking. Any ideas on that one would be welcome.

As I start on smaller projects for the winter, I have to say I am still fired up. I am ready to tackle that baby project. I just can't afford so much yarn this time.